COMMENTARY, July 31 — My friends are such a joy to me. Every time they groan and bemoan something or another, I see things with fresh eyes. I learn something new.

This week, the topic of their discontent is not being able to travel. And by travel, they don’t mean not being able to taste charcoal-baked gong bian biscuits in Sitiawan or char kway teow in Penang, full of wok hei.

No, they mean not being able to hunt down the best flat white in Melbourne. Not being able to travel means missing the sakura season in Japan and tasting freshly fried pad Thai from a Bangkok street vendor.

But why can’t we just go on excursions within our own country, especially now that interstate travel is allowed during the Recovery Movement Control Order (RMCO)? It’s not the same thing, they answer.

No, perhaps not.

Penang 'char kway teow' isn’t only iconic and delicious, it has a strong sense of place.

We’re not trying to replace the beef noodle soup of Taipei with the prawn cracker noodles of Melaka. We are not trying to replace the sunflower fields of Saraburi with Pangkor’s green paradise. They’re entirely different experiences.

One of the reasons we have become so accustomed to a holiday abroad could well be the advent of affordable low cost, no frills airlines. When everyone can fly, chances are we are flying overseas rather than domestically for our vacations. The further the locale, the more exotic the destination, the better, right?

Perhaps not in the time of Covid-19.

Now that borders are closed and the pandemic is raging across continents, we have to rethink travel. We might be travelling to get away, to relax and recuperate, but do we have to go very far for that?

Busy dishing up the famous Tengkera prawn cracker noodles in Melaka.

Sometimes it’s easy to lose sight of what we have in our own country. Before Covid-19, foreign visitors flocked to our verdant rainforests, to Taman Negara, to Mount Kinabalu.

I recall vividly observing a Caucasian family alternating between sunbathing and wading into the waters to collect rubbish at one of our local beaches years ago. What a humbling display of environmental caretaking.

When I tell my friends about my occasional local getaways to explore other towns and states, they tell me it’s too hot. Too rainy. No air con. (Yes, that’s what the outdoors is, essentially.)

This is not to say we don’t have domestic tourists but we rarely stray off the beaten track. Weekends in my hometown used to be swamped with out-of-towners if you happened to be in the Jonker area. Not just tourists from Singapore and China but plenty of daytrippers from KL and other states.

Charcoal-baked 'gong bian' biscuits in Sitiawan.

The usual suspects, sure. But when I tell them some of the best chee cheong fun I’ve had in Malaysia can be found in Johor Baru, I get confused stares. (Don’t you mean Penang? No, JB. Don’t you mean Ipoh? No, JB.)

They can’t fathom the thought. No surprise when we have learned not to go out of our way to see for ourselves, to explore our own tanahair beyond what is obvious.

I am, of course, just as guilty. I’ve been to every state in Malaysia but how many of them do I truly know that well? Some of my Thai and Japanese friends know more about certain parts of Malaysia than I do. (To be fair, they assure me I am more familiar with Bangkok and Tokyo than them, so there you go.)

Now is the opportunity to learn more about our country and its beauty and our fellow countrymen. Just remember to stay safe. A vacation is no reason to get complacent.

I recently drove down to JB for belated Qing Ming prayers. (We missed the actual tomb sweeping day in early April when the nationwide lockdown was in place. Yes, we’ve had to defer Qing Ming, a small sacrifice when we can fulfil our duties at a later, safer date.)

Malaysian beaches teem with animal life, if you can spot them.

To be honest, there was some degree of concern even while we were making our plans. How safe is it, truly, to travel now? I look at the situation elsewhere around the globe and I realise that what we have is very good already at this point in time.

Along the way, we made stops at the North-South Highway rest areas. We were heartened by the degree of SOP (Standard Operating Procedure) compliance at the restrooms and food courts.

When we got to JB, we performed the now (new) normal of scanning the MySejahtera QR code before entering a shop, along with having our temperatures taken and a spritz of complimentary hand sanitiser.

It was all very reassuring. We went to our regular chee cheong fun stall and the uncle thanked us for patronising, remembering us though he hasn’t seen us in a year.

We had coffee at our favourite café in JB and the young owner-barista shared how badly business has been affected. But he’s optimistic things will recover. This sense of possibility and hope is moving and, in turn, fills one with the sense of possibility and hope too.

Some of the best 'chee cheong fun' in Malaysia can be found in Johor Baru.

Travelling locally — cuti-cuti Malaysia — can be both a salve during these trying times and a way forward too. Already the country’s domestic tourism activity, post movement control order (MCO), is expected to grow 30 per cent over the next six months to a year .

But all of this is moot if the number of Covid-19 cases, which has been on the rise recently, continues increasing unabated. Another MCO or conditional movement control order (CMCO) could be re-enforced.

So it’s up to us, while we explore our own country with fresh eyes, to stay the course: keeping social distance, wearing masks and washing our hands frequently. Otherwise the only travel we’ll be doing will be via screens and memories, within the four walls of our homes.

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